Yet another Gary Clark Jr. materialized, guitar in hand, at the NBA All-Star Game on Sunday night. Surely there is more than one of him. The Texas guitarist’s ubiquity over the past 18 months would seem to require a doppelganger or two.

In New Orleans alone, he’s performed at the trifecta of major festivals – Essence, Voodoo, New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. A year ago, he joined Stevie Wonder onstage for a private Super Bowl gig in a tent erected along Convention Center Boulevard. He headlined the House of Blues in November. Elsewhere, he stood alongside Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh to shred “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” during the recent nationally televised Beatles tribute. And he was back in town to perform “The Star Spangled Banner” prior to the Feb. 16 game’s tip-off.

The relative dearth of bonafide guitar heroes of recent vintage – especially those whose style is so firmly anchored in blues-based forms, but also informed by more contemporary influences – is a contributing factor in his ubiquity. But so, too, his ability to rise to the moment and provide the sort of guitar liftoff that is not easy to achieve.

Clark was a highlight of the bustling NBA All-Star Game pre-game festivities. He immediately followed vocalist Serena Ryder’s traditional rendition of the Canadian anthem, one that inspired Canadian-born rapper Drake to sing along heartily from his courtside seat.

The game’s player introductions played out to a hit parade led by Pharrell Williams. That Williams enjoyed a massive 2013 was reiterated by a medley that included three of the past year’s biggest hits, all informed by him: Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines,” Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” and Williams’ own “Happy,” his Academy Award-nominated contribution to the “Despicable Me 2” soundtrack.

Williams is first and foremost a producer and songwriter; only recently has he made a concerted effort to recast himself as a marquee performer. His voice can come across as a bit thin at times; it was hard to tell at the arena how much was actually Williams’ live voice, and how much was being filled in by other sources.

He was joined by a succession of guest rappers. A hyper-animated Nelly revived his “Hot in Herre,” which is still goofy fun, especially with a troupe of crop-top female dancers and a faux concert audience enthusing right along with him. Busta Rhymes’ rocky crag of a voice makes Mystikal sound like Aaron Neville. Sean “Diddy” Combs and Snoop Dogg/Lion – later seen sharing an embrace with Shaquille O’Neill courtside – also joined in. A deep bench of additional rappers, including the aforementioned Drake, plus 2 Chainz and Ludacris, sat courtside, but went unused.

All that flash and flurry stood in stark contrast to Clark’s understated, respectful solo guitar reading of "The Star Spangled Banner." Any time a guitarist takes on the national anthem, comparisons to Jimi Hendrix’s watershed Woodstock moment are inevitable. This wasn’t that. Clark took a more subtle approach. Armed with a hollow-body semi-electric guitar, and wearing a slide on the pinky of his left hand, he stayed firmly rooted in blues tradition.

Clark sings, but opted to perform the anthem as an instrumental. He strummed with his fingers, using the slide to mark the end of what would be lines of lyric with quivering accents. Toward the conclusion, in place of “our flag was still there,” he teased and sustained notes in a dramatic flourish made all the moreso given the relative chill of the rest of the song. He played the rest of it out to well-deserved cheers.